Skill Order

Champion Matchups

Introduction

Hello Solomid-Community.

This is a Day 1 guide to give you something to start with, once VI is released. Since Slater covered the jungle aspect, I wrote a Top Lane guide, depicting some strategies and a general build idea. Feel free to comment and give feedback and ideas to improve this guide until we have approved and featured ones.

VI is an aggressive AD Bruiser. Her Kit gives her high offensive mobility and some durability but above all, insane damage. Her CC although is just mediocre - one has-to-be-charged - knockback and an ultimate 1,25s knockup.

Therefore your role is: picking out single dangerous targets, bully their carries and burst people down. Vi isn't optimal for a tank.

Masteries

In my opinion, there are only 2 effective ways to play Vi. The first one (and more compelling for me) is the offensive approach: put 21 points in offense to destroy enemies fast and thorough, getting some basic defense as well.
The second one will be explained below.

Tier 1
Summoner's Wrath: 5 additional AD and AP on your respectively reduced MR and armor on your should add a slight edge that may make a difference in some cases.
Fury: to get your rolling and basically improving your sustained damage.
Sorcery: more spells mean more damage and more .

Tier 2
Deadliness: because Vi scales so good with AD and to get to past tiers.

Tier 3
Weapon Expertise: pretty obvious. All of your damage is physical so 8% armor penetration will help you apply that.
Havoc: percentage damage is a pretty obvious choice as well. Best choice to get to past tiers.

Tier 4
Brute Force simply adds more dps on both styles and auto-attacks.

Tier 5
Vi does not make great use out of critical strikes, hence we skip 10% critical damage (Lethality) and the AS buff after crits (frenzy). The AP masteries won't help that much since only has an AP scaling on it.
Butcher won't pay off except for laning and pushing and putting points in there sacrifices teamfight potential and damage versus champions.

Tier 6
The reason why we are putting so many points in that tree: about 2-3% more overall damage on your targets, especially in the crucial phase when someone gets low. Crucial choice in my eyes.

In case you need more durability and your team lacks people that can take a few hits - or if you have to go def against your lane.

Tier 1
Durability: more HP means more shields through . More HP contributes better to every armor and MR you get.

Tier 2
Hardiness and Resistance both increase your early game survivability. Hardiness is even more important, since it increases your defense versus turrets and minions (and dragon).

Tier 3
Veteran's Scars: Same as for Durability. More HP is always desirable on a bruiser, especially with such a passive.
Unyielding: get a point and leave it there. It's just a tiny bit more defense but the impact is minmal. However, don't take 2/2 or Safeguard, Block (T4) or Relentless, because you need the points for other masteries that have a greater influence on your performance.

Tier 4
Tenacious: Vi is melee, CC'd melees deal less damage in most scenarios where they are rooted or slowed - in opposite to mages or ranged DPS. Therefore making you as mobile as possible and decreasing CC effectivity as much as you can is valuable.
Juggernaut is extremely nice for you since it scales greatly with your - like durability and Veteran's Scars.

Tier 5
Defender gives you 1-5 armor and magic resistance. That does not sound much, but it may give you an edge in early and mid game, it's item independent and it adds more defense per mastery point than legendary armor.
Legendary Armor: at first glance it might sound great, but even with 3/3 your armor and magic resistance wil increase only by an amount of ~5-10 (10 in case you got 200 armor/MR), which is not that huge. Since percentage penetration decreases that effect even further, you mind even take a point into good hands (nice in late game) and/or Reinforced armor to counter AD carries or //.

Tier 6
3% damage reduction is just too good to pass up. This increases the worth of every inch defense and HP that you get and let's you escape with a sliver of health sometimes. Or frustrating enemies aiming at you even further ("Why won't she lose HP?").

Tough Skin/Bladed Armor: not worth the points we need elsewhere, become useless later in the game unless farming and if you make use of it, you are probably pushing already.
Perseverance does not really make a difference and soaks up points we could use elsewhere.
Summoner's resolve: without taking , you won't need it - and that you'll use one of the above is highly unlikely.

I guess, whatever masteries you take, you should be fine without speccing into mana / mana regen. Summoner Spell CDR may come in handy in a few cases, but over all, some durability is just fine for VI. The rest gives you stats which increase your damage by a huge amount, especially armor penetration and %-damage.

Runes

There are a few runes that might be possible to run, my favorite is always highlighted, my second choices are like that.

Marks and Quints:

AD is plain effective due to her great scaling in almost every aspect. Every spell benefits from it and auto-attacks deal more damage. Best scaling.

Attack Speed increases your damage via and auto-attacks, but at the cost of extra damage on .

armor penetration should be inferior due to Vi's great scaling, but in some extreme cases it might be worth taking some extra armor off your enemy. Consider maxing in this case, since it is % damage and does not depend on AD that much.

Quints:

life steal can help you sustain in your lane in case you get counterpicked and/or having a hard time to farm. It costs you some decent early game damage though, but these runes get even better over the course of the game.

Seals:

usual choice should be armor: provide the highest effect on the field, making it easier to tank minions/turrets early on and especially trading with your lane. Get them when your lane deals mostly physical damage.

Summoner Spells

Explanation:

Great to make plays and for a fast getaway. Why over ? There is no constant damage except and autoattacks, all of your spells have cooldowns and are kinda bursty. Ghost does not complement the use of .

Flash can give you the ability to close a huge gap combined with and/or . Since Vi has huge burst potential and a lot of her damage comes from cooldowns, finishing off opponents is a lot easier with flash. Flash also gives you the opportunity to double-pass walls with (no matter if you are chasing or escaping), but escaping is a lot easier, since you can flash out and charge comparably safely to finally get away. Another reason why you should get flash is your . Sometimes you want to go in, burst something instantly down and retreat right after. Flash is your summoner spell of choice then.

Since most of your damage is burst, this complements to your skillset just fine. Since you can't CC enemies long enough to prevent healing, this cuts heals down to 50% atleast. The true damage from ignite really helps you combo someone down fast and clean. However, if you have trouble surviving, more flat damage may not be the right call in teamfights every time.

Alternatives to

To give you a more supportive role and help control a dangerous foe in mid / late game. Decent alternative for ignite. This spell should be considered if you expect trouble from likely-to-dive enemies, difficult AD enemies on top or jungle. It also severely helps dealing with hard-scaling damage beasts like and others.

Supportive team spell, especially great versus bursty-but-CD-reliant enemies on your lane and of course against AoE enemy teams. Don't pick this up when the enemy team got innate health reduction ( etc.). However, this tool enables you to bait kills for your team - after patch you don't even have to be the bait for that trick.

Not that great for your team, increases your survivability by a large margin. Especially useful versus true damage and high burst enemies that rely on their high cooldowns. If your team generally lacks tanks or tanky champions, you could consider taking this for an additional shield. However, try to use it in the downtime between 2 s.

For extremely CC-heavy enemy teams. In case you really need to get the hell away from stuff like ++++. Otherwise, this spell shouldn't be too handy, especially in lane which puts you at a disadvantage. However, if CC is your only problem, take it.

Skills

Passive: Blast Shield

Innate: When Vi's activated abilities damage an enemy, she gains a shield equal to 10% of her maximum health for 5 seconds. Blast shield has a 18 / 13 / 8 second cooldown.

Explanation:

You hit a target with a spell and gain a shield for 10% of your max HP for some seconds. To be honest, I tend to estimate this passive as a "nice addition" but a minor impact one. The cooldown is quite high for the impact and if you aren't that tanky, it won't make a huge difference. Can make the difference between life and death in some particular situations and can help you win duels and trades, but that's about it.

First use: charge up and become a bit slower. Second use: uses spell for a charge that damages every target hit (75% minions and monsters), stops at charged range (or cap) or at impact with enemy champion. Applies .

Pew Pew. Your bread and butter, your little engagement tool and trade-winner. Keep in mind that this spell slows you on the first charge - so if you want to flee or chase, use the charging time wisely, e.g. by using it in a brush or flashing into sight while immediately using this spell afterwards.

You can abuse this spell to ignore unit collision with minions to escape or to close gaps.

Be careful! The charge can be interrupted (silence, root, stun, knockback/-up etc.), rendering the cooldown used worthless in that moment.

W: Denting Blows

Passive: Every 3rd attack on the same target deals additional physical damage equal to a percentage of the target's maximum health, reduces its armor by 20% and grants Vi bonus attack speed for 4 seconds. Denting Blows deals a maximum of 300 damage against minions and monsters.

This spell gives you HUGE amounts of late game damage, your sustained dps goes through the roof thanks to percentage damage and incredible attack speed bonus (a reason why stacking attack speed isn't that great for Vi instead of attack damage). Increases your sustain via lifesteal hugely. This spell is also the reason you should focus high priority targets in teamfights, since it increases the AD damage of all your team mates. Another use could be the fast burst on a cocky tank, which has been caught away from his team.

E: Excessive Force

Active: Causes Vi's next basic attack to deal bonus physical damage to the target and enemies behind it. Vi periodically charges a new punch and can hold up to 2 charges at once.

Pretty plain spell. Use it to reset auto-attacks and stack auto-attacks faster. You also gain lifesteal for the hastened auto-attacks. So if things look sinister, abuse this. You can also attack a lot of enemies at once in teamfights or abuse the range if someone escapes with a quantum of health. Keeping one stack to trigger can sometimes save your life.

R: Assault and battery

Vi targets an enemy champion and chases it down, knocking it up for 1.25 seconds, dealing physical damage and applying Denting Blows.

While charging, Vi is immune to crowd control and will knock aside enemies in her way, dealing 75% damage to them.

Very similar to , and also , this spell is targeted and therefore can't miss. Like , you can't get CC'd in the meantime and you can hit multiple targets with the minor CC before you actually hit your target. Clever enemies can abuse the fact that you can't interrupt your chase and flash into turrets/their whole team with tons of CC to stop you after. Surprising and well-coordinated use with your team is necessary to have a bigger impact.

When someone is dumb enough to trade with you for 15s+ in lane, you already won. The AA reset is mentioned multiple times in the guide and is independent from your rank on (except for the slowly decreasing cooldown). Thing is, enemies won't trade with you so long that the higher rate of E will pay off. In the meantime, your lower Q CD keeps enemies at bay and the utility can save you from ganks. The greatest part of E damage comes from basic AD anyway, which is independent from your rank.

the Math

Let's assume 80 base AD and 25 Bonus AD at level 8 and should be around the same, 2x auto attack reset is regardless of -ranks, unless cooldown decreases it enough for another use. Everything before cooldown reduction though. I considered to max up 's charge every time.

As you can see, you will lose damage-wise in every scenario. Now lets obtain additional bonus AD:

Every Bonus AD you gain, increases your damage by 1.4 per use damage by 1.15 per use (2 usually, so 2.3)

Increasing your AD by 100 adds 140 damage per use 230 damage per 2 uses
Gain: 90 damage.
You won't catch up until you have maxed as well as so it is totally pointless to max over .

Skill Order

>>>

Level 1-6:>>>>>>>>>>

Level 7-11:>>>>>>>>

Level 12-16:>>>>>>>>

Obviously above all else, since it has the most impact in teamfights of all spells and the damage increases (while CD decreases) hugely per rank.

Cooldown Reduction and Damage increases greatly per rank and it is your main source of damage while trading.

Take an early rank and leave it there. The armor penetration stays the same and the damage does not increase hugely with each rank. Only thing that rises fast is the attack speed, which is of no big use til you obtain a lot of AD.

More gain per rank than , charge reload time decreases as well (slightly) which gives you a multiplicative additional gain damage wise considering the rest of your kit.

Item Builds

Start:
pretty obvious allround stuff. You are melee so you want mobility and sustain. You can shield some poke off with so you won't need I suppose.

Boots:
If troublesome AD monsters bother you early (, , and the likes) or enemy team got a fed carry early.

Most cases. Being melee and benefitting from constant attacks due to makes tenacity very important for Vi.

Second one if you can't constantly attack enemies due to CC and/or movement and teleporting spells.

Offense:

If Vi had been released already, you could argue that this item was build for her. Stacking armor penetration with , cooldown reduction, a chunk of attack damage, some durability directly contributing to . Awesome. Every stat increases the damage of all your sources severely, it also adds some defense and the costs are mediocre for that huge package. Should be your #1 item in most games.

You will auto-attack alot due to and BT gives you around 100 AD, which is great for every skill and every auto-attack you apply on your foes. The sustain helps you past your initiation on enemies and can help you win duels/trades.
However, getting this right after will make you squishy as hell and enemies will try to save every tiny bit of CC for you exclusively. It may be enough to get and take some hybrid/defensive item first and finish this later or when you are fed extremely early.

I believe this item is great for VI. The active helps you engage on a single target even easier, your increases your damage and lifesteal by a huge margin. could be enough for early/mid game to enable kills for you, so you can proceed to more durability. BotrK is great for short, intense fights, but since the % damage depends on your targets current health, the use decreases over the course of a brawl. The active contributes to fast kills in a limited time frame as well.

adds a lot of early survival and a decent chunk of damage. Upgrading is expensive and may pay off later rather than earlier. Combined with some lifesteal and this item can frustrate enemy mages pretty hard. Increases your damage (especially in long fights) hugely and gives a bit MR. Perfect vs. bursty AP assassins. Should be picked up if you don't go for .

The other MR - AD item. Especially useful against suppression and other CC, makes you an undesirable target in some cases. Adds much MR and AD as well. This item can be useful if you want to pick up + early and finish it in late game. 120-150 MR should be worthwile getting if the enemy got a strong mage or another AP character. This item is too expensive if you don't need the active. Better get or in that case.

additional Offense:

Usually you shouldn't need this. But if 2 or more enemies start stacking 150+ armor, you should consider picking this up as well. Another reason for this could be a fed but tanky bruiser, especially someone like and stuff. However, the impact of this item is not that great for Vi as for other AD champions since you have and provides more overall useful stats that also have a large impact early on.

Adds some CC, some durability, an sheen procc which VI doesn't use that much and some damage, crit and attack speed. Triforce is decent on Vi, but it's not that great. It can be a nice addition later on (maybe finish it from an early ) - the slow and movement speed as well as the damage stats are nice for Vi but TF is always an expensive choice. Keep that in mind. Her kit doesn't emphasize on the sheen procc that well - cooldowns are comparably high (to abuse the 2s window) and a lot of damage comes from spells anyway. Might be worthwile getting nonetheless since you have which also increases the sheen damage.

Neat if you need the tenacity. Gives you an overall benefitting package though you won't need the extra attack speed THAT much, because of - can be nice to start heavy though. I consider this item in the middle between recommendable and just medium.

Currently, I am not that huge of a fan of that item, to be honest. Most importantly, this items gives you cooldown reduction and mana. The AP increases a bit. It does add some CC, true. However, it's expensive and does not add that much which contributes to your skillset. Almost everything on this item is just "ok" for Vi, there is nothing you couldn't purchase with more effect on the same purpose.

Defense:

Since you will probably run along with your team in teamfights most of the time. Neat item for overall durability. Get this if your team lacks tankyness and they won't need your full damage potential. This item is great for 2 reasons: it increases your overall tankyness early by building up the components and it increases your entire team's defense (especially great for your squishy carries). Well, that may be common sense. But if you are struggling to survive, you can as well relieve your support a bit and increase your overall teamfighting performance.

To increase your overall defense, when you build a more offensive build. Let's you charge in and take out 1-2 enemies, often without dying (either for the lack of focus on you or because of the revive). Use it careful though. This item has been nerfed and provides less defense now - it's just mediocre in terms of mitigation, just a neat overall package to put on an offensive build.

Awesome combined with . Your survivability versus auto-attackers but also melees in general should increase severely. If used right after your engage, you can disable the whole enemy team on your own for some seconds. This also decreases their damage on active. Perfect for your team and perfect for you facing auto-attackers and AD enemies in general.

Works nicely with your passive. The slow keeps you on your prey, applying way more easy and putting enemies you choose to attack in a painful spot, especially when your team is right behind you. An might help you getting early kills in lane and while ganking.

In case you need HP and more CC, this should be useful.

Against burst monsters with high cooldowns. Usually not that great, but adds 100 virtual HP via passive every 8 (or less) seconds. Take it against bursty and CD-reliant enemies or for flat true damage. Avoid it when facing .

In case you need an overall-defense package and tenacity. It's an "okay" item, a bit of sustain, a bit of armor, a chunk of HP. I am not that fond of this item either. There are alternatives that offer more for the same price, if not less.

Considering your final build:

Think about your role first. (Tanky initiator needed? Carry-bully needed? Just a 2nd Tank/bruiser needed?)
Think about your enemy setup and feed. (CC? AP or AD? Who got most items and what?)
Think about your approach in teamfights and who is going to fight you.

Example build:

(early) match up section

Very Hard:

Too much CC, can keep you from hitting him thanks to

Basically, makes you lose when you have to auto-attack him a lot. His mobility and finish the deal.

His passive blocks a full auto-attack, he can basically choose when to fight with you and can poke a lot from a distance, which makes him a deadly foe for VI.

Both deal some burst damage in close quarters, but Riven got comparably reliable CC and higher mobility which helps her choose and win trades.

There aren't many champions which win a brawl with Darius. Vi is not one of them and besides that, she can't really help with his ultimate.

Lee Sin is too mobile and too safe to play against for VI.

Can choose when to fight, can poke you down really fast without retaliation, he can sustain himself back. Has huge damage early on - you don't.

You can't really autohit or reach this guy while he keeps poking at you from away - auto-lane-loser.

Early Game

Try to farm as much as possible. Try not to push your lane with your spells while trading too much. Get rid of huge stacks of minions while using through minions and when you're on the other side. Try not to use mana to take out minions though. Skills only push your lane and you don't want that either. In most cases, it is more useful to outfarm your enemy than to attempt kills by yourself. Vi has a huge burst potential, but beyond that, there is no deadly mechanism which ensures kills against most common top laners, so rather try to keep your lane at bay.

Trade* only with cooldowns up and think about an escape route in case you get trapped or baited (or if your opponent simply deals way too much damage for you to handle and you haven't foreseen this).

Trade by:

a) using , especially unexpected (from brushes or out of line of sight) and possibly putting your opponent in an unconvenient spot. Follow up with auto-attacks, hastened up by the abusive use of immediately after an usual attack struck your target.

b) auto-attacking your opponent right away, til you hit him with , then immediately use between hits to increase auto-attack damage as much as possible. Use to catch up with a running enemy or to finish your foe.

*trading refers to you dealing damage to your opponent while receiving damage yourself. You should usually avoid that if it is certain that you won't deal as much damage as your enemy or the same (or if his sustain is far better and he can overcome you in health long term). You should trade with enemies to soften them up for your jungler or to bait them overconfident when they believe they can kill you.

Ganks:

Enemy ganks can be avoided with and / or . The most elegant way would be to rush through the enemies minions and even behind yours so you can yourself and put obstacles in the way. In case of dives, abuse your to push enemies away from you or into turret range and abuse to deceive them into being overaggressive against you with low HP. Damage estimation is wise though. In case you already got lifesteal, use your to increase your auto-attack rate for sustain and trigger earlier.

Allied ganks: try to let your enemy push when he tries to trade with you (prominent examples: and so on), then try to push him with in an inconvenient spot. In case you are 6 already, use your after his/her flash or to give your jungler time to move into position. You can attempt to knock your opponent back after your by using (especially easy if you have or redbuff). Try to maximize your damage through clever use of styles like mentioned before and bait enemies into their oblivion with and .

Mid Game

If the lane is extended and both teams play passively due to lack of kills, you can either force dragon or proceed to farm your lane, eventually taking a turret. Coordinate with your team and look for upshowing opportunities. You can sacrifice your turret if you can take dragon instead (and maybe even a few kills). Make sure the enemy jungler does not smite dragon away from your team.
If the enemy team engaged on dragon before you did, try to kill their jungler and/or other enemies occupied in the dragon pit. Don't go all alone into a full team and in case you aren't the tank wait for him/her to initiate.

If you have decent farm, you may as well try to help your other lanes with unexpected roaming early. / is especially useful in doing so, in particular when someone of your team can stun or suppress or immobilize.

Other than that, stick to your team and help them pick up roaming single foes (even if they are tanky) and assist on kills and dives. Try to help your support warding and don't wander around the map all alone. Keep track of your lane and the enemy jungler and warn your team appropriately.

Help kill turrets and pushes (particularly mid lane) as well. Protecting turrets on the other hand should be easy due to the aoe-and-instant-nature of her spells. When enemy team

Team Fights

Vi is particularly great against 2 sorts of enemies: tanky ones with lots of HP and armor due to her . And against squishy stuff that dies almost immediately. What screws her is hard CC and and... , which kind of counters her , see Skill section.

Usually you can approach a single high priority target, either initiating for your team or waiting for your tank to actually do that. Focus their AP carry (early/mid game) or AD carry (mid/late game) right away and chase them out of the fight or prepare a kill on them for your team.

It's best to "mark" your target for your team due to the armor penetration from , which makes it easier for your carry to kill it. Try to aim at their entire team if not as many squishy targets as possible.

Remember that hits everything in the path, not only the targeted enemy. It can force people to isolate themselves, making them easy prey, flashing behind their team (which gets them all hit) or just stay there and get beaten up by your team. This skill is valuable, safe it for a critical and/or convenient moment.

Protect your carries with or even if necessary (against , , and similar stuff).

Bait spells and foolhardiness/recklessness with your lifesteal and and escape. Try to aim away from enemies that want to block your Q-path.

Late Game

Secure Baron. This and enemy Nexus/Inhibitors are your number 1 priority. If you can make your enemies busy by pushing their inhibitors off you'll most likely get Baron easier. Dragon can be done by you alone and very fast so don't bother giving up turrets or even baron for that purpose. Buffs aren't that important as well but still more useful than just trading pokes for 10 minutes. Don't get caught. Ever. You have to be there for your team and focus their AD Carry like there is no tomorrow. He/she shall never survive.

Surprise isolated or split up enemies if you can and prepare easy kills for your team. Protect your carry at all cost, even if you have to die. If he/she can make it alive after an enemy team aced and your lanes are pushed, that might cost the enemy a turret, an inhibitor or even the game.

Distract dangerous or CC-heavy enemies to keep your team safer and hinder enemy effectiveness. Push lanes if it is safe to do so (Vi is very fast at that).

Keep in mind: the enemy nexus dead or their surrender will win you this game, not kills or won teamfights alone. They only help in achieving the prior.

Final Comments

This was my Day 1 VI Solo Top guide. Tell me everything you think I can improve or what you enjoyed. I will try to constantly update this guide as much and fast as possible, adding videos, pictures, stats and overhaul the items several times (probably). Maybe this can even get a permament one.

yours sincerely

Esthasolyte/Esthaniel.

Comments

I've been running vi top quite a bit at around 1500 elo, and I tend to max E for one big reason

It doesn't require you to be in melee range to harass. I find darius, jax, etc, being a lot easier to deal with due to this. It also lets me clear through caster minions when i'm behind without putting me in any danger.

By the way, Esthasolyte. One thing I think your guide should cover is getting E at 1 but still maxing Q against early game people for poke back potential such as Vs. Pantheon. I found E had great early game damage and the shield instantly negated at least half his spears.

Came on here and made an account specifically to make contact with the author here and ask a bit of back and forth about Vi defensively.

In a couple games I have been placed in the not too uncommon lane pairing of Vs. Darius and found that defensively focusing in health/armor really helped against him, granted focusing in defense neutered offensive play, but I found that Atma's Impaler really kicked me back into the game mid-late game no sweat. Would you be willing to look into some mathematics as to how often this may be optimal?

Sorry for the brick of text, mobile phone doesn't show typing interface all too well.